


Molten Copper

by Slyboots



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Alien Mythology/Religion, Atheist Character, Bittersweet Ending, Blacksmithing, Developing Friendships, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Tearjerker, Wakes & Funerals, cremation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:40:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28496961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slyboots/pseuds/Slyboots
Summary: "'I love you,' he mutters into the crackling air, not that it matters now."Knock Out holds on to what pieces of Breakdown he can: old home movies; the iron forged by Breakdown's hands; memories that seem to dissolve before his horrified eyes; and some harsh lessons about what it means to care about another, learned before and after Breakdown's death.
Relationships: Arcee & Knock Out (Transformers), Knock Out/Breakdown
Comments: 20
Kudos: 54
Collections: Secret Solenoid '20-'21





	Molten Copper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eternal_night_owl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternal_night_owl/gifts).



> Written for seeker-of-the-stars for their Secret Solenoid 2020 prompt “Knock Out reflects on his past relationship with Breakdown after his death."
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

It is a brilliant summer day. The heat rising from Breakdown’s forge bends the light; though the warehouse’s long shadow falls over the fire stairs, Knock Out feels his circuits crisping. He soaks his rag in solvent, working it lazily over his calves. Droplets of spilled solvent hit the dusty lot below and flash into steam.

They are newlyweds; they are shabby as scrap metal and hungry as Scraplets.

And yet Breakdown laughs riotously as he works. His hammer-blows stir the dust. In the light and the heat and the stinging smoke, Knock Out feels his joy.

As the sky turns ember-red, and the fire dies down to lazy wisps of smoke, Knock Out wipes soot matter-of-factly from Breakdown’s faceplate. “Well done, Breakdown. You stink like a foundry.”

“Might be an improvement.” Breakdown grins lopsidedly; it’s roguish, Knock Out decides. “C’mon. Ask what I made you.”

They perch like pigeonoids on the fire stairs, watching the sun set over Iacon. The solvent pail’s running low, soot swirling around the bottom. Knock Out eyes Breakdown, a patchwork of chipped navy-blue paint and streaky ash. (His cheap wax-and-polish from their Conjunx Ritus is long gone.) Heat rolls off him, and he reeks of coal and slag metal.

On nights like this Knock Out catches himself staring: at sturdy cables and clever hands; at the worn-dull angles of his faceplate, where Breakdown’s age is beginning to show; at his pretty copper lips; at his optics—

“Gee, let me think—a real slagheap of a mess?” He keeps his voice tart and bright. “Three guesses, Breakdown. Play fair.”

“You’re on.”

Lower Iacon is warmed by vast subterranean smelters, and the air tastes industrial. At night Knock Out misses the stinging cold—

But Breakdown likes Iacon, he insists, and Knock Out slings an arm around him. 

“If it’s another crab—” A quartex ago they snuck into what proved to be a nature film. Since then, Breakdown’s forged a horde of scrap-metal decapodians, squat and ungainly: he can’t get the legs right. 

“You  _ want _ another crab, huh?” Breakdown mimes jotting it down. “Can do. Big one for the anniversary—couple little ones for All Spark Day—”

Knock Out flicks him with the rag, spraying solvent and ash. Breakdown growls and pounces; with a yelp of _“_ _ watch it— _ _”_ Knock Out scuttles backward, dropping the rag off the fire stairs.

“Whoops.” Breakdown looks smug. It lasts until Knock Out upends the solvent pail over his head.

Breakdown usually lets him win. An arrangement they’re both content with, Knock Out thinks—

—though he’s never asked, and he wouldn’t know how to begin.

“You’ve got two more guesses.”

They sip bootleg Engex from mismatched cubes, under the pretext of watching the moons rise. Lazily Breakdown rubs Knock Out’s wheel wells, wiping away grit.

Knock Out takes a swig. Thinks. Shifts against Breakdown’s comfortable bulk. “Something silly I’d never guess.”

Some nights he still feels he barely knows Breakdown: this amiable ruffian with a surgeon’s careful fingers. Theirs was a brief romance. Yet Breakdown seems to know him, too intimately, and sometimes Knock Out bristles at the understanding in his gaze—

“That mean you give up?” Breakdown’s snicker rattles both of their frames.

Knock Out gazes up at the stars, through a gauzy haze of smog. Iacon is filthy below its gilded domes; Knock Out suspects Breakdown loves its grime and grease. “Like the Pit I give up. Is it a twisted hunk of scrap metal?”

“You tell me.” Breakdown hauls himself upright, his weight shaking the steps as he bounds down. His coolant-tank hisses. A cycle later he’s back, clutching something delicate.

Knock Out stares. No words come.

“Still gotta paint it red,” Breakdown rumbles. Even forged in black iron, Knock Out’s alt-mode is unmistakable. “Maybe pick up some varnish.”

In Breakdown’s big hands, it’s blindingly beautiful; burly, dingy Breakdown is sometimes so beautiful Knock Out burns with envy.

“Always the artist,” he says, a touch weakly. “And what a stunning model.”

Stellar cycles pass lazily, almost unnoticed. The vorns slip by.

They argue, as couples do. Knock Out’s words can lacerate; Breakdown’s bellows shake the whole district. Breakdown sobs into his hands when he thinks he’s alone. Knock Out never admits he knows.

Under Breakdown’s careful maintenance, Knock Out stays young. Breakdown’s labors age him quickly; he refuses all Knock Out’s offers to buff him smooth.

They are poor; they remain poor. Occasionally they come into ill-gotten Shanix. They spend it. Knock Out dreams of the glamorous life; Breakdown is content, he says, with his little life in the shadows of Iacon.

Their work is mostly illegal. Breakdown is mangled by a rival gang’s enforcers; Knock Out patches up what he can. For the rest he goes into debt to a back-alley surgeon.

Breakdown’s fresh welds are blindingly bright, the molten solder glowing as it cools. He eyes them almost indifferently. “Knock Out?”

The clinic smells of varnish and death. A brutal light streams through the curtains round the berth. Knock Out almost chokes on his relief. “Say something, you big lunk.”

Breakdown seems to think about it, through the haze of cheap painkillers. His vocoder sputters. “Ow.” He touches the nearest weld, hiccups, and lies still. A bright smear of metal hardens on his fingertip.

“You’re real pretty,” he observes cycles later, his vocoder slurring. “Can we have oilcake for All Spark Day? Really craving oilcake.” And then, in a tired voice, a voice more like his own: “I love you, Knock Out.”

They do not say it often. Knock Out almost chokes on his shock.

They roam the planet, sometimes following the street racing circuit, sometimes for the joy of it. Breakdown loves Kaon’s sweltering heat and its barely-contained chaos; Knock Out likes Polyhex’s clean streets. Always they return to Iacon. They have no home, not really—but better the slagheap you know than the one you don’t.

Knock Out films a terrible stop-motion movie with Breakdown’s iron decapodians. He voices all the parts himself. Breakdown laughs until his engine turns over and invites his lobbing buddies to the premiere. (Such as it is.) As the film winds down, Knock Out and Breakdown pitch the decapodians, one by one, into the smelter. (They glow fiercely as they melt, straining to hold on to their shape.)

The world grows tense, as if waiting for something. Zeta Prime institutes crackdowns. The surgeon vanishes, and Knock Out feels a rush of glee: no more debt.

Knock Out thinks, deep in his kernel-level coding, that he and Breakdown will be together until the end of time—and perhaps afterward. It never occurs to him to question this.

Breakdown grows more handsome by the vorn, Knock Out tells him. Breakdown laughs it off.

And then—war, and all that comes with it.

“Stay strong,” Breakdown rumbles in the night. His one optic glows like molten gold. “Tough it out.”

The  _ Nemesis _ frowns on fraternization between officers and enlisted mechs; there are rumors of bias, of conspiracy. Officially they mean nothing to each other.

Breakdown is a good and loyal nurse, and off-duty he forges fresh armor for the wounded. He is cruel and brutish and swaggering; Knock Out loves this, too. They were criminals once; they are butchers and salvagers now.

“I love you,” mumbles Breakdown as Knock Out checks his vitals after a skirmish. Energon trickles, bright in the dim medbay, from his gashed cheek. He laughs dazedly.

It is the first time either of them has said it aboard the  _ Nemesis _ _._ They are not sentimental mechs.

Knock Out wipes the Energon away. Kisses Breakdown’s cheekbone, almost tenderly. Swallows any hint of shock. “You should.”

“Stay strong,” Breakdown repeats like a prayer to gods who are not there. Like a plea, or else a vow. (Knock Out has never believed in gods; Breakdown might. Knock Out’s never asked.)

Knock Out schemes and smiles and cracks brittle jokes. (No one laughs.) Breakdown sobs silently in the night (when he thinks he is alone). Knock Out never asks why.

Breakdown’s optic patch is the ugliest thing Knock Out has ever seen. Against it his face shines more beautifully.

Knock Out thinks, deep in his kernel-level coding, that the stalemate on Earth will continue forever. He will live in the shadows of this backwater world with Breakdown forever. Perhaps that’s enough.

And then—

A Terran year passes. The  _ thing _ in the medbay is not Breakdown.

The  _ Nemesis _ _’s_ forge is dizzyingly hot; Knock Out feels glassy-eyed. His cables ache from the weight of what he has just carried to the furnace.

The smelter roars, its glow as bright as molten copper. It seems to char the air, hissing and spitting. Knock Out tastes: combusting paint and wax and rubber; the lingering oily-sweet stench of Dark Energon and organic tissue, clinging to the back of his throat; something he cannot name. He thinks perhaps it’s grief.

“I love you,” he mutters into the crackling air, not that it matters now. Knock Out slumps against the belly of the furnace, listening.

Skyquake was buried beneath a cairn of stones, he knows. The Vehicons they scavenge for parts. But it is sickening to imagine Breakdown slowly rusting away to nothing, as this backwater world claims his body over the eons. A smear of iron and copper and steel in the bedrock. And then: oblivion. He imagines Breakdown cold and lonely, falling tenderly to pieces beneath a world that was never his—

Breakdown was a hard and brutal mech, and he did what had to be done. He thinks perhaps Breakdown would have wanted to be dismantled for parts, like a common Vehicon. _(_ _ Broken down _ . Very funny.)

It occurs to Knock Out that they never discussed it. Like so much else.

“You  _ glitch _ _,”_ he mutters. “Always picking fights you couldn’t win. Well, your luck finally ran out, Breakdown—”

The anger chokes him for an instant. His rage discharges into the air in a snap of electricity, a bright flash.

“And you’re  _ dead _ _,_ well done, and I’m  _ here _ _,_ and it’s terribly unfair—”

Smelting was traditional back home (though they have no home now). They have no smelting pool aboard the ship. Breakdown was always a pragmatist. Breakdown made do with very little; so Knock Out makes do, too.

The furnace rumbles. Knock Out remembers, in a bright clear flash, Breakdown’s filthy homemade forge. He presses his warm face into his warm hands and tries to remember the smell of coal, the blaze of light across the warehouse walls, the smoky skies over Iacon—

He remembers the decapodians—the squat, ugly,  _ stupid _ decapodians—and snorts, surprising himself. With a pang, he remembers how they blazed so sweetly in the smelter.

Knock Out sits up, his back complaining. (Breakdown will oil the joints, he thinks—but he won’t.) He presses a palm to the furnace. Its low growl and sturdy warmth are oddly soothing. He used to lie against Breakdown’s side watching the stars—

Molten metal drips, with a sound like rain, into the collection tank. Knock Out clambers to his feet, forgetting his joints, forgetting everything. The stream of molten copper shines, radiant with heat; it is the most beautiful thing Knock Out has ever seen. He thinks perhaps it burns brighter than his Spark; he thinks perhaps the lovely ache will reduce him to ash.

His words come out bitterly cold. “I love you, Breakdown. Ciao. ‘Till all are one.”

Knock Out has never believed the more breathless stories about the Allspark; he doesn’t intend to start now.

“Your partner—” says Starscream in the early hours of the morning. The wind is cold enough to choke on. An alien sky stretches over the top deck; the horizon glimmers with ghostly light.

Knock Out thinks of the chunk of copper tucked away in his subspace, close to his Spark. It’s heavy when he moves. Solid. “I took care of him.”

He smiles brightly. (His smile is his armor.) Starscream shudders and drops the subject.

The war ends. He defects (several times). He is forgiven (mostly). Optimus Prime plunges into the Well of All Sparks, and the sky streams with light.

Breakdown is there, perhaps, some streak of dizzying orange. Knock Out wonders, despite himself—but there’s no hint of his conjunx in the endless blazing sky. He aches suddenly for Breakdown’s  _ body _ _:_ his crooked grin, the growl of his hefty engine, and his musky smell of warm copper and engine-grease after a hard day.

That Breakdown is dead. This is a light show, nothing more. Knock Out’s armor prickles with spite.

Knock Out presses his hand to his chest, feeling the pulse of his own Spark. The night tastes of dust, not victory. Beneath his feet the dry earth hums.

The lump of copper in his subspace seems to pulse too, as if alive.

If the Autobots (the  _ other _ Autobots, he reminds himself) catch him being sentimental—

But no one looks.

Solar cycles pass in a blur. In the ruins of Kaon, Ratchet sets up a shabby clinic.

“You’re a passable surgeon,” he says gruffly. “And I don’t want you wandering around getting into trouble—”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” It’s glib. Knock Out picks grit from between his seams; Kaon is filthy, a dead city on a dead world. Breakdown would have—

He cuts that train of thought short. “Little wrinkle there. Nobody trusts me.”

Ratchet grimaces, his old joints squeaking. The morning sun leaks through the cracked walls. “Well, they shouldn’t.  _ I _ don’t remotely trust you. But here we are.” He harrumphs, firing up an outdated console. “We’re all going to have to make some sacrifices.”

“Goody.”

“To begin with, Ultra Magnus needs a full physical exam.” Ratchet raises a finger, tutting, as Knock Out opens his mouth. (Knock Out seethes.) “Which  _ I’m _ going to do, thank you. Your job is to stand back, behave, and operate if the internal injuries are severe.”

“What a privilege,” says Knock Out. “Charmed.”

It feels odd to be valued again.

“Well,” says Knock Out cycles later, “he’s got a few dings and scratches. Looks like a nice wax-and-polish will be just the ticket.”

A flask of Energon steams over their heating coil. Ratchet’s office is cordoned off from the examination room by stained curtains; Knock Out is abruptly reminded of the back-alley clinic, so many stellar cycles ago.

“A few frayed wires here and there. A touch of joint wear. Hemorrhage from the fuel lines into the pump. His arm seems to have gone missing, but never mind that.”

Breakdown would have laughed. Ratchet groans and pulls the flask off the heat. Without asking, he measures out two portions. “Can you fix it?”

“The arm? Certainly.” The Energon tastes gritty and unfiltered. Another small indignity. “I might have a few spares sitting around in the  _ Nemesis _ _._ Too bad you all crashed it.”

Ratchet sputters. “That’s not even on the  _ table _ _._ We can’t do a full transplant in these conditions. No nurse. No working monitors. Barely any auxiliary power. Limited anesthetic. We haven’t even got a blacksmith to forge a full replacement, even if you  _ could _ wire it.” His fans hiss. “By the Allspark, what kind of butchery did you and Breakdown—”

It is the first time he’s heard Breakdown’s name in half a quartex. Knock Out goes rigid; he laughs carelessly, but the damage is done.

They stare at each other, through the weak sunlight tinted by steam. Ratchet’s expression changes fractionally. Knock Out longs for an instant to skewer him.

“He  _ was _ your assistant, wasn’t he?” says Ratchet. Perhaps he believes his tone is gentle.

“He was a crack field nurse,” says Knock Out, examining his claws to avoid Ratchet’s gaze. His smile aches. (His smile is his armor.) “And a once-in-a-generation blacksmith. Terribly talented with a rotary buffer. Awful sense of humor. Subjected me to  _ terrible _ puns. Couldn’t sing. Ate too many sweets.”

Ratchet cold-cocked Breakdown once, Knock Out remembers; his mouth twitches. For an instant he’s not sure whether to laugh or swear.

“He was my friend,” Knock Out amends. Even that feels strikingly personal. “But never mind that.”

For the next quartex Ratchet keeps him too busy to think.

“You’re on thin ice,” Arcee reminds him. She is the last patient of the solar cycle, and they have time to talk.

He picks shrapnel out of her calf, tugging a fuel line delicately aside. “Oh, gee, really? Must have slipped my mind.”

The sunlight trickles listlessly down the wall. Arcee’s motors squeak as she winces, with a whiff of burning plastic.

“My dear, if I wanted to kill you—” He mimes snipping a fuel line. “Easy peasy. Excruciatingly painful for you, of course.”

“Really cute.” She rolls her optics; he appreciates that. “Look, Ratchet wanted me to talk to you.”

His forceps clink. A chunk of shrapnel drops into the basin.

“Let’s not and say we did,” says Knock Out.

Arcee’s gaze goes colder. He appreciates that, too. “You may not be winning any prizes for empathy, Knock Out, but in case it slipped your mind, you’re not the only one who’s lost somebody—”

Again he goes cold and rigid, and the chunk of copper near his Spark chamber feels like a lump in his intake. “My deepest sympathies. Now suck my tailpipe.”

“You were in love with Breakdown,” she says heartlessly. Knock Out feels nothing at all. Even his annoyance has deserted him.

“I want it  _ glistening .” _

They stare at each other. For an instant Knock Out is acutely aware of the gentle pressure of his forceps on her fuel line. He  _ could _ sever it. Easy peasy.

“Whoop-de-doo,” says Arcee. “Got it in one, huh?”

He opens his mouth to say, smoothly,  _ Breakdown was a blundering lunkhead with more muscles than circuits in his processor _ _._ It gets lost on the way to his synthesizer. “Nice try. Very inspired. A little touch of psychology. Totally wrong, of course.”

“Ratchet guessed. I wouldn’t have believed it—I don’t think I  _ did _ believe it—” Her vents hiss as Knock Out works the forceps free. “But I saw the look on your face just now.”

“Tell the good doctor,” says Knock Out, “he’s cordially invited to slobber on my spotless—”

“That one. Right there.” Her lips twitch. “That stupid look like someone just slugged you. You’re grieving.”

The wind seeps through the cracks in the walls, bringing with it the chill.

“Are you done?” It tastes like ash and molten metal. “And to think your little Autobot pals called  _ me _ a sadist.” 

“You’re grieving,” says Arcee again, crueler than Knock Out has ever been, “and people do stupid things when they’re grieving.”

He wrenches the last chunk of shrapnel loose. Arcee winces, the metal screeching across the inside of her plating; Knock Out can find no scrap of sympathy within him.

“Breakdown was a gifted nurse.  _ I’m _ a butcher, little girl.” He goes for his arc welder. Even as the coolant surges through him, painfully icy, he seals her up neatly. Beautifully. “Get off my table.”

He takes a long drive that night, speeding through the shantytown where Kaon once stood. The gritty wind slices through him; he craved the cold once, he remembers dimly. So many things about his life before the war seem to crumble to ash as he thinks of them. His memories fragment, drifting on the wind.

Memory banks wear down over time; silicon chips age and microprocessors fry. He tries to recall Breakdown’s laugh. It slips away on the night.

The world seems to stretch on forever. He is unmoored, with no anchor.

He picks up speed, whipping past bombed-out mineshafts. In better days, now-dead mechs mined iron here, and in a tiny insignificant corner of Iacon (and that corner was the center of the universe), Breakdown forged that iron into something beautiful—

He is losing Breakdown, bit by bit.

Frantically—as if there is no time to waste—he tunes his commlink to Breakdown’s frequency. “I love you,” he repeats, in a voice cold and hard as iron, “I love you—where the  _ Pit _ have you gotten to?”

The dead air is colder still than the wind. In the rustle of static Knock Out hears ghosts.

“Don’t you  _ dare _ leave me,” he says, as if it makes a difference. “I need you. Can’t get a good polish without you.”

In the early morning joors, he hugs himself in the berth and tries to remember Breakdown’s embrace. From his subspace he pulls the chunk of copper. It gleams under his headlights, so beautiful he gasps. His optics sting. A drop of lubricant rolls down his cheek and splashes the copper.

Knock Out waits for more tears. They do not come. He feels on the verge of sobbing; awkwardly he sits in silence for cycles, listening to the distant wind.

Knock Out sits up, fumbling for a chamois. Tenderly he wipes the copper down, polishing it to a dazzling shine. His own heat leaks into it; it feels almost alive in his hands.

“Never did let me buff you,” he mumbles. At the thought he smiles; his optics sting again, but no tears fall. “You were so handsome. Sometimes I despised you for it. Hope you forgave me for that.”

He never asked. He supposes he will never know.

Knock Out slips into recharge with the piece of copper snug and warm in his arms. It does not—cannot—hug him back.

Knock Out dreams most nights of big hands, a rolling laugh, the thunderous ring of a hammer. He never recalls the details upon waking, though he lies cold and shaking in his berth, reaching out for a body he smelted quartexes ago—

“What was he like?” says Knock Out abruptly.

Everyone comes through Ratchet’s clinic eventually. The Vehicon tilts his head, visor flickering. XR-S73, Knock Out remembers; Breakdown knew their serial numbers (or pretended to).

Knock Out’s Spark flickers hot in his chest. He feeds the replacement wire through the Vehicon’s dismantled shoulder, less gently than he might have. “Breakdown.  _ Sergeant _ Breakdown, if you must. Heavyset. Eyepatch. Blue. Surely—”

“I came online after he bit the big one,” says the Vehicon at last, his vocoder buzzing. The Vehicons still fear him. “Sorry, Doc."

The wire almost snaps in Knock Out’s hand.

“He was decent,” says the Vehicon hurriedly, perhaps catching his expression. “Everyone said so. Not  _ nice _ . Decent.”

It sounds right, and Knock Out finds himself nodding along. “Keep talking.”

“Not like Dreadwing.” The Vehicon watches the shifting pattern of light on the wall. “Dreadwing cared about doing the right thing. I don’t think Dreadwing cared about anybody. Not after Skyquake.”

Dreadwing was sunk in grief, Knock Out remembers, grief so thick it threatened to swamp the whole ship. For half a Terran year Knock Out kept his distance—and then Dreadwing was gone too, and the problem solved.

“Breakdown cared about  _ people _ _,_ everybody said.”

“Airachnid murdered Tailgate,” says Arcee, almost casually. They are perched in the bombed-out skeleton of a bar, drinking bootleg Engex. Knock Out’s missed drinking. “Guess we’ve got something in common.”

“That’s nice,” says Knock Out, just as casually. From the look in her optics, it’s the wrong thing to say; he can’t bring himself to care.

Two more Vehicons corner him in the fading daylight outside the bar. Arcee twitches; in an instant, her gun is cocked. “Go ahead. Try something.”

_ “ Hey _ _.”_ Knock Out picks himself up off the blackened ground. “Watch it, trigger-happy!”

“Word is you were asking about Breakdown, Doc.” The closer Vehicon lowers his own blaster. “We remember him.”

Arcee’s face goes tight. Unreadable.

Knock Out tastes sour Engex. “Buy me a drink, then we’ll—oh, wait. My bad. Bar’s closed.” But they have him hooked. He’d follow them anywhere. “Shoo, dear.”

Arcee laughs hollowly. “Not on your life. I’m supposed to be babysitting you while Ratchet’s on Earth. Or I’m your unpaid grief counselor. Maybe both.”

To that he has no retort but “cram it.”

So they settle into a pool of sunlight outside a long-abandoned warehouse. In the gentle breeze, a half-shattered fire stair dangles, swaying gently to and fro; it scrapes against the bricks with a long squeal, counting time.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” begins the first Vehicon without preamble. His visor’s cracked down the middle. (An easy repair job, thinks Knock Out, to his own surprise.) “You heard stories. Passed down, you know.”

“About sergeants,” says the other Vehicon, whose armor is striped in cheap yellow. Some old miners’ fashion, Knock Out remembers vaguely. “One-of-a-kinds. With names.”

“About Breakdown,” says Cracked-Visor. “I, uh, don’t know if—”

“I’m a big boy.” Knock Out stretches, catching the sunlight; it feels unaccountably cool. “Hit me with it.”

“They said he was wild,” says Stripes, scratching a gouge in his leg. “That he went crazy back home on Cybertron, maybe.”

Back home. Odd to hear it from these two, of surely recent manufacture.

“They weren’t wrong,” says Arcee, cleaning her gun. The Vehicons stare at her until Knock Out snaps his fingers; as one they look back.

“They said he was stupid,” says Cracked-Visor, and Knock Out’s temper prickles. “Or maybe he got hit in the head too many times. Turned his processor into mush.”

With a tight little shiver, a shiver he cannot fully disguise, Knock Out remembers shining a light into Breakdown’s optics after a skirmish. Watching his pupils. “Standard scuttlebutt. Breakdown was sharp as a tack until the end.”

Arcee moves to speak, raising her brows; Knock Out mimes slicing a fuel line.

Cracked-Visor looks nervous, if a blank mass-produced face can look nervous. “He was tough. I mean, he was difficult. Tough too. He got angry.”

“They always got angry,” says Stripes.

It sounds plausible. Knock Out remembers the dull glow of Breakdown’s optics and how his snarl bared all his teeth. Even that he misses, he finds.

_ “ That _ I believe,” says Arcee with a bark of a laugh, and Knock Out’s filled with pique on Breakdown’s behalf.

“He’d apologize.” Stripes picks dirt from his rims. Perhaps he’s avoiding Knock Out’s gaze; it is impossible to tell. “If he really lost it.”

Cracked-Visor watches the sun sink low. (Probably.) “Breakdown went hungry if a seam went dry. I mean, he didn’t refuel at all. Said we needed it more. He could stand to miss a few refuels.” 

It hits Knock Out like a cold wave—for more than once they had no Shanix for fuel, or else there was no fuel to be bought, and every time Breakdown made the identical joke—

He feels the warm nudge of the copper chunk beneath his breastplate.

“Bulkhead could’ve taken a lesson from that.” Arcee shifts, her shadow splintering in the dust and scree. She’s taking pity on him, Knock Out realizes. Filling the silence. “Well, you’re making him sound pretty cuddly, but I still wouldn’t have married the guy—”

“Now I find out you and your assistant were Conjuges?” says Ratchet into the whirring darkness. They’ve installed new monitors at long last, the finest Earth can manufacture. “How long were you planning to—”

“Leave me  _ some _ mystique, old-timer,” drawls Knock Out. It’s a token effort. He checks his claws for dust; he’s checked them twice already.

“You’re right.” Ratchet’s vents sputter. “I  _ don’t _ actually care. Not about something piddling like that. But if you’re keeping anything  _ actually _ important from us—”

He listens to the steady beep, to the whispery hum of his own engine. “Sure. I’ve got every last one of Shockwave’s encrypted files crammed right up my receptor. Oh, and for my next act, Soundwave’s entire private archive.”

“Hilarious,” says Ratchet. “I’d ask if Cybertron meant anything to you—if what  _ Optimus _ —” He breaks off. “Well, if you have any concerns a little more  _ consequential _ than your own paint job. But I know the answer.”

“Feisty. You really got me there.”

Ratchet harrumphs. “You know, at first I thought you were a textbook narcissist. You took me right back to my psychiatry rotation—”

“Must’ve slept through that one, myself.” Knock Out feels nothing. The monitor’s lights oscillate gently, making him woozy.

“You’re the most self-absorbed mech I’ve ever seen, and that’s a tall order.” Ratchet’s smile is self-congratulatory. Too gentle. As if Knock Out needs coddling. “But you’re hardly a monster. If you let yourself  _ accept _ that Breakdown is gone—”

And Knock Out rises. “Oh, look at that. It’s my pager. Got an emergency appointment with  _ eat-my-dust _ _.”_ Without looking back, he strides from the clinic.

He’s throwing pebbles into the Well of All Sparks when Bulkhead finds him.

“Heard you had a little trouble with Ratchet.” Bulkhead settles with a grunt onto his backside. Knock Out’s reminded unexpectedly of Breakdown—

—though everything and nothing reminds him of Breakdown lately. “And the Academy Award for Most Obvious Statement goes to Bulkhead.”

Bulkhead chuckles humorlessly. “He can be a little—uh. His Spark’s in the right place. He’s trying.”

Knock Out flicks another pebble. It seems to fall endlessly, never hitting bottom; perhaps there  _ is _ some mumbo-jumbo about the Well, Knock Out thinks. Perhaps the Allspark is all it’s cracked up to be—and perhaps the last scrap of Breakdown is there too, somewhere. He thinks for a nanocycle of information theory, of the delicate flicker of heat energy that was Breakdown’s consciousness, a collection of bits—

Knock Out finds a bigger pebble.

“Will you knock that off?” growls Bulkhead, his blue optics sharpening into ice. “Look. I don’t wanna be here. You don’t want me here.”

“Would you look at that?” The pebble bounces off the side of the Well. “Ladies and gentlemen, in a  _ shocking _ surprise twist, the  _ two-time _ winner of the Academy Award for Most Obvious Statement—”

“You want me to throw  _ you _ in there?” Bulkhead throws up his hands. There’s a nasty snag in his voice. “You think you’re the only one with problems, huh? You and Breakdown deserved each other.” 

It’s no compliment; still Knock Out leans back, dropping his handful of pebbles. The sun’s trickling down the horizon, over the vast stark plateau. As far as his optics can make out, the world is scorched and lifeless.

“He was fond of you,” says Knock Out at last. “If truth be told, I do believe Breakdown was a little attracted to you.”

It’s only half a lie. In the waning days of his life Breakdown lived for the joy of bloodshed, and Bulkhead always obliged.

Bulkhead’s expression doesn’t change. “Well,  _ that’s _ disturbing.”

Knock Out smirks. Breakdown would’ve been tickled, he thinks; his Spark simmers warm and comfortable in his breast. The copper in his subspace is soothing. “He liked it rough.”

Bulkhead groans. “Breakdown was big and mean and stupid, and he deserved what he got. There? Happy?” He looks away, his face falling into shadow. “Heard you’ve been asking about him. You’re wasting your time. And everyone else’s. There was nothing to him.”

“Two out of three,” says Knock Out. Breakdown was a giant of a mech; Breakdown could be thrillingly cruel. “Not  _ bad .” _

“Yeah. You’re just like him.” Bulkhead folds his arms, staring out over the Well. The sweetest of compliments, Knock Out thinks, his mouth twisting.

A flicker of tangerine light swoops from the depths, barreling through the night. Knock Out does not let himself wonder.

“What’d you see in him?” says Bulkhead after a long silence.

It takes Knock Out a nanocycle; at first he thinks he’s misheard Bulkhead. “I like ‘em big.”

Bulkhead scoffs, shaking his head.

“He made me laugh,” says Knock Out, as if it means nothing. He draws his knees up to his chest, hugging himself as he watches the Spark streak overhead. “He was terribly handsome, naturally. Clever with his hands. In every sense.”

In the deep distance, the moons are rising.

“He loved me.” It sounds so obvious. Yet Knock Out fumbles in the dark. “Not just the paint job.  _ Moi _ _._ Couldn’t turn that down.”

Bulkhead takes a moment to speak. “Sure he did.”

On the Kaonian plateau, Knock Out stretches a salvaged curtain between two scavenged pylons. The projector’s archaic: staticky and prone to skipping frames. But it plays pre-war data slugs.

Parked alone in the endless dark, he watches.

His own recorded voice sounds strikingly young and bright. It occurs to him, with a jolt, that he’s aging. “Citizens of Iacon, you are about to see something never before witnessed by living optics. No bot—”

He pronounces the small “b,” as everyone did before the war.

“—has seen these abominations and survived to tell the grisly tale. Viewers of a delicate disposition are invited to exit the theater now—”

A familiar deep chuckle cuts into the audio track. Knock Out’s motor hitches sharply, as if the sound scraped his paint raw.

“ _ Breakdown _ _,”_ whines the younger Knock Out, and it’s impossibly tender. Knock Out wonders, listening, if anyone else ever loved so deeply. “I’ll have to cut that in edits.”

“Sorry. Hey—lemme do it.” Breakdown’s voice is rougher than Knock Out remembered. His vocoder clicks, a sound Knock Out has not heard for a stellar cycle. “Uh. Tonight we bring you the only known footage of the—”

They both dissolve into helpless laughter. Breakdown’s laugh is the sweetest of all sounds.

“—oh,  _ scrap _ _,”_ puffs Breakdown. “The—Primus—the only known footage of the Killer Decapodian of the Acid Wastes—”

He slams on his horn for emphasis. It’s staggeringly loud; after a moment’s silence, both of them roar with laughter.

You had to be there, supposes Knock Out. But he chuckles too, weakly.

The movie is as terrible as he remembered. To his chagrin, his younger self was not much of an actor. The sound effects are plainly Breakdown slamming things together; the Acid Wastes looks suspiciously like the vacant lot below their squatters’ habsuite; and Breakdown never  _ could _ get the wretched crabs’ legs right.

By the end of the film, Knock Out’s in his root mode, kneeling in the dust. Helplessly he laughs, though lubricant tears stream down his faceplate.

“You never asked about Tailgate,” says Arcee.

A city is rising all around them, the shantytown giving way to something lasting. They’ve been on Cybertron for four quartexes now, and the exiles are returning.

Knock Out slugs a terrible cocktail. They are sitting atop a roof, in something approximating a bar. “My bad. I didn’t care.”

They have settled into a comfortable mutual loathing, Knock Out thinks; he suspects Arcee might see things differently. (He doesn’t ask.)

“Okay, you’re completely self-centered. Bad example.” Arcee’s on duty tonight. She drinks her Energon undistilled. “If anyone  _ else _ did it, it’d be refreshing.”

“Tell me about whatshisface,” he says, without enthusiasm. “Better out than in. I’ll make sympathetic noises, how about that?”

Arcee’s eyebrows rise.

And she does, in a low hard voice; he listens, barely, and supposes he’s moved.

“Y’know,” he says as she simmers down, “you and I won’t live forever. Oh—let’s call it five million stellar cycles from now, nobody will remember Breakdown and Tailgate—”

“You keep finding new ways to disappoint me,” says Arcee.

“—of course, I  _ do _ plan to stay eternally young and lustrous—”

“You make Megatron look like a sensitive guy,” says Arcee.

He breaks off, watching a straggling pack of Camien refugees below them. “D’you remember Tailgate’s face? No reason. Scientific curiosity.”

For a moment he thinks she might shoot him, then and there; her gun emerges with a click. Arcee shutters her optics, venting scalding-hot air. “Ask me that again, and I don’t care  _ what _ Optimus said. I  _ will _ shoot you.”

That, he supposes, is a no.

He makes back-alley deals for war footage. Breakdown’s old squad featured in a handful of propaganda reels.

“Lost to history, most of ‘em—” Rattletrap’s crooked teeth glint. “But for the right price, I might be able to cut a little something together for ya.”

Knock Out eyes him, long and hard. “Any interest in cosmetic dentistry?”  
  


And then the first propvid rolls on Knock Out’s makeshift screen, and Knock Out knows instantly he would’ve paid any price. Breakdown’s smile is almost shy; he looks anywhere but at the camera.

“—and last but not least, Breakdown of Iacon,” booms the unseen announcer. “Anything you want to say, big guy?”

Breakdown looks for an instant transfixed by fear. “Uh. I’m good.”

The vid’s poor-quality and degraded by bootlegging. The subtleties of Breakdown’s face are eroded. Yet he gleams, all the same. Though Breakdown was no newspark when war broke out—

—Knock Out remembers running his claws over the dings and bubbles in Breakdown’s paint, remembers tenderly kissing the premature age-marks on his faceplate, and the fierce immediacy of the memory stuns him into laughter—

—he looks painfully young.

“You’re welcome,” he says. It’s a night at the bar like any other; he supposes this must be what friendship feels like. “The Tailgate Supercut. Just eight cycles. He wasn’t much of a star.”

Arcee’s optics go wide and bright. For a klik he thinks, once again, that she will shoot him.

She takes the data slug, staring at it with hungry optics, as if hoping too much will make it disappear.

“What do you want, Knock Out?” she says at last.

He shrugs, watching the sun stream down the alley below them. “Love. Kisses. My conjunx. A decent oil bath within a hundred kilometers of this scrapheap.”

The next time they meet, she tells him—in a hard cold voice—about Cliffjumper.

_ Whom I personally vanquished _ , says Starscream in the back of his mind. Still he listens, making what he hopes are sympathetic noises.

It seems to work.

He is lonely; it is sharp and bright beneath his breastplate. It feels like a betrayal of Breakdown’s memory. As if Breakdown’s place beside him is receding into staticky films and the low ache that seems never to abate. Breakdown is becoming  _ his past _ .

_ You’re no Breakdown, _ he told Starscream once. As if anything or anyone could be.

But Breakdown’s memory feels shadowy now, and a sickening thought nags at Knock Out: someday he will  _ replace _ Breakdown. Someday some poor sap will see beneath his dead smile and his lustrous armor, and will puncture the bright cold void that is his Spark—

“I love you,” he murmurs into the darkness of his berth—but less and less often. “Don’t leave me here.”

And just as often he whispers, “don’t you  _ dare _ make me feel guilty, big boy.” But he feels eminently stupid talking to dead air, and Breakdown has gone now where he will never hear Knock Out’s voice again—

A half-completed war memorial looms now over central Kaon, casting a deep cold shadow. Eight quartexes ago Knock Out became an Autobot.

“We aren’t friends,” she says, feeding a chunk of her lunch to a pigeonoid. “Get this straight.”

“Rude.” Knock Out hisses at the pigeonoids; they scatter. “Had to do it,” he says at Arcee’s expression. “They peck everything in sight. I’m the shiniest thing around.”

Arcee looks deeply exhausted. “Satisfy my morbid curiosity. What do you think friends are?”

The question lodges somewhere below his armor. Knock Out decides he didn’t hear it. “Look at this eyesore. Breakdown would’ve blown it sky-high in the dead of night.”

“Breakdown was deranged. Sorry you found out this way.” Still she glances up at the memorial. “It’s some pretty slick political theater. No way in the Pit that’ll fit everyone.”

Knock Out’s been out of the loop, he realizes. Consumed by himself. “We have politicians now? Gee whiz. Civilization at last.”

“I thought about trying to get Cliffjumper and Tailgate on there,” she says, in the same almost matter-of-fact tone. “But I’d have to kiss some pretty ugly exhaust ports.” Arcee frowns. “Next time Ratchet comes back from Earth, I’m hitching a ride on the space bridge. Cliff’s still buried out there—and Jack’s starting college—”

Some solar cycles, they speak only of their grief; some solar cycles, they have little to say to each other, and time crawls forward like molten glass.

“Your partner,” she says, and then, “your conjunx. Where’s he buried?”

At his incredulous look she sighs.

“Breakdown’s grave. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I want to see it. Maybe just to convince myself he’s dead.” Arcee looks morose. “Scrap, maybe I’ll bring flowers.”

And Knock Out feels the yawning void between them, deep and senseless.

He will never understand Arcee; some nights he wonders if he ever understood Breakdown, and the question burns like a scar in his processor.

He cannot explain himself to her, he realizes. The lump of copper sits in his breast, heavy as a promise.

“That thing? Sixteen tons of iron and copper.  _ Breakdown _ went where good Cons go. Wherever that is.” Something acid leaks into his voice. “Probably nowhere.”

He takes long drives through the Acid Wastes, retracing their travels. Breakdown’s memory is a sweet ache by his side.

“You would’ve loved this, big guy,” he says into the dead air of Breakdown’s frequency.

Cybertron’s crevasses gleam now with an unsettling light, and in the distance the spires of cities glow faintly against the sky. Civilization at last.

He crosses into Iacon. (He makes good time; Breakdown was slow, he remembers with a warm rueful glow, and driving with him was an exercise in patience.) Through shattered domes and vast half-melted smelters he picks his wary way, cursing. The streets are unfamiliar now; so much is unfamiliar.

“There goes the neighborhood,” he murmurs to Breakdown. “Good thing we sold the habsuite.”

And then at last he steps around a corner, into the half-collapsed ruins of a warehouse. A bomb brought down one wall, and the air is choked still with dust.

It hurts less than he expected it to, and it hurts more. Their habsuite is ash, the fire stairs a rusty shadow against the bleached-white wall. Still at any moment he expects to hear the empty lot ring with hammer-blows—

Breakdown’s anvil is still there, and the crushed remnants of his forge. Proof that Breakdown lived. Knock Out touches the anvil; the metal is cold, and a layer of dust comes away on his hand. (Knock Out winces.)

If anything is sacred, he thinks, this must be.

He sifts through the dust like a pilgrim, soaking up the quiet. If anything survived the bombs, the ages have consumed it. Twice he almost gives in, almost turns away (with a muttered curse) to pick his long and bitter way back to the plains—

A flash of red catches his eye. Knock Out’s Spark flares into his throat.

“You big  _ sap _ _,”_ he whispers to Breakdown.

Perhaps it is a minor miracle. The iron sports car is intact. As he picks it up, flakes of varnish peel away into the dust.

Proof that Breakdown loved him.

“You have a statue of yourself in your exam room,” says Arcee. “Do you realize how weird—”

Her calf is open, the wires fanned out before him. Knock Out goes for a scalpel; at her glare he grins. “Made you squirm.”

“You might,” she says, “be the most self-absorbed person I have ever met.”

This is friendship, he imagines; one of these solar cycles she will stop arguing otherwise.

“That statue was forged, dear—” He glances back at it. The paint job’s original, faded and bubbled. He could not bring himself to replace it. “—by the most brilliant artist ever to live—”

The solar cycles pass, one into the other. Slowly the names of the dead creep like rust over the war memorial.

“Say. There’s still some room on that thing. Any chance—” he says lightly, at the end of the day. His clinic is a comfortable room in the Zeta Prime Memorial Hospital now, well-lit at all joors, and he sees Bulkhead’s grimace clearly.

“Not him. Not on your life. If it were up to me—which it’s not—”

Knock Out beams.

“— _ still _ no.”

That night Knock Out pulls up to the memorial, his motor humming with spite. “One more little excursion, Breakdown,” he says into thin air. “Just like old times, big guy.”

It takes him cycles to select a likely spot: slightly above Knock Out’s own optic-height, where the gazes of generations will fall. Stone is harder to carve than living metal, and he’s never had Breakdown’s easy facility with tools.

Still it comes out beautiful, chiseled deep into the stone:  _ BREAKDOWN OF IACON . _

With any luck, it will stand until Knock Out himself is molten metal and ash, and long after.

“They’re leaving it up,” says Arcee over drinks. “Go figure. How many vorns of community service did you get?”

Knock Out sips his Visco, watching her faceplate. “They added it to my sentence. I  _ might _ finish before the heat death of the universe. Then again, might not.”

“Vandalism  _ would _ be the one decent thing you ever did.” Her tone is unreadable; he doesn’t try. “You really felt something for him, huh?”

An odd way to put it.

He feels Breakdown’s shade still, a tender presence at his side. Breakdown’s features are blurred in Knock Out’s memory; his voice is hazy, as if on a weak radio connection.

He was handsome. This Knock Out remembers.

“You were good to me,” he murmurs into the welcoming dark. Still his arms feel empty at night. “If you’re out there, Breakdown—”

He thinks of information theory; he thinks of the silent decay of bits into radiant heat. He imagines Breakdown’s consciousness dissipating softly, sweetly into ambient noise. The background heat of the universe. Till all are one, indeed.

“—you’d better be happy.”

He thinks of tangerine-colored Sparks arcing through an indifferent sky, of the blaze of a sledgehammer on hot iron.

“You’d have aged well. Really, it’s unfair. Didn’t get to see that.” It comes out in a low hiss of static. “You were so beautiful. Radiant, that’s the word. And you knew me so well—”

He thinks of Arcee, unexpectedly. Her living face is bright in his mind, her optics fierce and tired; yet Breakdown’s sweet ghost remains, undiminished.

“—and still liked me. Don’t know how.”

From his subspace he produces the lump of gleaming copper. Knock Out holds the last of Breakdown in his hands—gently, as if afraid it will vanish.

“You knew I loved you.” It is not a question. “Wasn’t always the best about showing it. But you knew.”  
  


As gentle night sweeps over Kaon, and the streets below Knock Out’s examination room go dark, the door clicks open. Knock Out jumps. Catches Ratchet’s reflection in the window.

“Don’t mind me. Dropping off some shipments from Uncle Sam.” Ratchet’s loaded down with crates. “Their manufacturing’s really coming along—”

Ratchet’s checking on him. Knock Out decides not to point that out.

Over the crates Ratchet catches Knock Out’s gaze. Together they stare at the car in Knock Out’s hands.

“It’s well-made,” says Ratchet gruffly, after a moment. Knock Out wonders how much he knows; he is not, he decides, bothered either way. “Very nice.”

As Ratchet crosses the threshold, Knock Out’s fans click, with a little cough. Ratchet turns.

“Little personal question,” says Knock Out, as if it’s nothing. “Haven’t gotten my paintjob updated since—well.” Since Breakdown. “Feels time for something fresh.”

“You’re asking  _ me _ _?”_ Ratchet’s brows rise. “The world’s stranger than I thought.”

“Happen to know a good coppersmith?”

There is nothing in the world so beautiful as freshly-polished metal.

A stellar cycle ago, Knock Out became an Autobot, and the Well of All Sparks blazed with light and life. Tonight the Autobots are holding a small vigil for their dead.

Ratchet messaged him the time and place; so did Arcee. The rest of them, Knock Out decides, will have to tolerate him.

He pulls up to the Well of All Sparks, shivering at the unexpected warmth of the night air. His new finish is fresh still, only joors old. So Team Prime will be the first to see him.

The air around the Well is bright with Sparks, darting and weaving in what can only be joy. The Autobots huddle in a loose circle nearby, their shadows long.

For a nanocycle Knock Out looks for a dazzling Spark the color of copper. He turns away, toward the living. “Ciao.”

Jaws drop; heads turn.

“Don’t all say hello at once.”

In their faceplates he sees, dimly, his reflection. Swirls of copper are inset into his plating, and fine copper streaks like Camien face-paint set off his features. Copper accents his crest now, and copper gleams on the backs of his hands.

They are beautiful together; they are inseparable. As long as Knock Out lives, the last of Breakdown will live, too—

And someday in a future so distant it seems abstract, they will be smelted together, as one.

“Let’s get the party started,” says Knock Out brightly. Ratchet and Arcee move apart, as one, to let him into the circle. He remains standing; his voice drops, almost respectful. “Never given a eulogy before. Never did have a reason to. But Breakdown of Iacon—some of you may have known him—meant something to me—”

He talks long into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> The crabs are a reference to Knock Out's Arms Micron, Gra.


End file.
